Modest Health Care Proposals, and for other purposes….

This morning, while haunting perusing Jerry Pournelle’s blog, I came across this Modest Proposal:

The simplest solution to the problem of health care costs is morphine as the only publicly paid for treatment for those 75 years of age and older. I haven’t actually worked the numbers, but from the generalities I have heard on costs of care in the last year of life, that would allow the present health care system to work fairly well. Older people who could afford it might opt for real insurance that they pay for, or pay for their own expenses while their expectant relatives fumed at the expenses — it would make for some good detective stories. The resultant savings — some 35% and more of Medicaid expenses are paid out in the last year of life — would pay for a lot of the health care dilemma.

One generation is pitted against another in the shadow of a Social Security crisis. Our protagonist, Cassandra Devine, is a 29-year-old public relations maven by day, angry blogger by night. Incensed by the financial burden soon to be placed on her age bracket by baby boomers approaching retirement, she proposes on her blog that boomers be encouraged to commit suicide. Cassandra insists that her proposal is not meant to be taken literally; it is merely a “meta-issue” intended to spark discussion and a search for real solutions. But the idea is taken up by an attention-seeking senator, Randy Jepperson, and the political spinning begins.

Of course, both of these were anticipated by a political cartoon I encountered a couple decades back, which proposed controlling Social Security costs by appointing Jack Kevorkian Surgeon General.

The current concerns about the Obama Executive Order are about the dangers of unaccountable international police operating in the United States. These concerns are without merit. Interpol staff do not even carry guns, and they certainly do not engage in policing in the United States.